The aim of designating 2015 as the International Year of Evaluation is to advocate and promote evaluation and evidence-based policy making at international, regional, national and local levels.

EvalYear, a Global Initiative of Coordinated Local Action
Governments, international partners and civil society need to know how policies and programs shape the lives of people today and in future generations. Given this, EvalPartners is facilitating a global dialogue among regional and national evaluation actors, evaluation offices of International Organizations, including UN agencies and the World Bank’s IEG, OECD/DAC and developing countries, private foundations and other key stakeholders. The aim of the dialogue is to advocate and promote evaluation and evidence-based policy making at international, regional, national and local levels through 2015 as the International Year of Evaluation (EvalYear).

EvalYear will be a catalyst for important conversations and thinking, at international, regional, national, and sub-national level, on the role of monitoring and evaluation in good governance for equitable and sustainable human development. Evaluation can enable leaders and civil society to develop and support better policies, implement them more effectively, safeguard the lives of people, and promote well-being for all. Evaluation can enable leaders to consider social, political, technical, financial factors, and make sure they are on the right path. Evaluation can help leaders report to their constituents honestly about the impact of their decisions, and listen to feedback from every group. However, if evaluation is to play these roles more dedicated effort, systems change, capacity building, and resources are required.

EvalYear will position evaluation in the policy arena, by raising awareness of the importance of embedding monitoring and evaluation systems in the development and implementation of the forthcoming Sustainable Development Goals, and all other critical local contextualized goals, at the international and national levels. EvalYear is about taking mutual responsibility for policies and social action through greater understanding, transparency, and constructive dialogue.

Building EvalYear Together
In the spirit of the EvalPartners Guiding Principles, EvalYear will bring together diverse stakeholders into a movement designed to mobilize the energies and enhance the synergy of existing and new monitoring and evaluation initiatives at international and national levels.

EvalYear features inclusion where everyone has a role to play: civil society, governments, international partners, academia, and individuals. For example, EvalYear will help to shape opinion and influence decision making through Voluntary Organizations for Professional Evaluation (VOPE)’s conferences and UN evaluation-related meetings that will keep the spotlight on policy coherence for equitable, and gender responsive sustainable development and good governance in the international and national arenas.

EvalYear invites innovation at many levels: methods of engagement and capacity building, peer-to-peer exchanges, use of technology for communications and scale up, and involvement of new partners.

EvalYear will bring together a strategic partnership of committed individuals and organizations around the world for coordinated action to promote evaluation as a catalytic intervention for better human development.

Why 2015
2015 is the year when the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) will be replaced by a new set of internationally agreed goals, most likely to be called Sustainable Development Goals (SDG). While the MDGs drove a global vision on human development and facilitated its implementation and monitoring, a comprehensive evaluation of what has been achieved has not been carried out so far. In part this is because the country level building blocks for such a review were not available. It is now widely acknowledged that national development policies and programs should be informed by evidence generated by country-led monitoring and evaluation systems, rather than donor-led ones, while ensuring policy coherence at regional and global level.

But other trends are also important. Citizen demands for evidence and greater accountability from governments are growing in movements across the globe. There is a bottom up swell for greater accountability that is leading to new innovations to strengthen and hold policy makers accountable. This bottom up response (and its tools of participatory evaluations, social audits, citizen report cards, etc.) is coming together with other international level approaches including the SDG and other processes to create very interesting spaces and possibilities. Citizen’s growing engagement in monitoring and evaluation, their demands, and their push for transparency, accountability, change and justice, also justify making 2015 the year of evaluation.

Proposed operationalization
EvalPartners, representing a partnership among major stakeholders, including VOPEs, UN agencies and donor agencies, will declare 2015 as the International Year of Evaluation. A roadmap to 2015 as EvalYear will be prepared and implemented in 2013-2014. The EvalPartners Management Group, in consultation with the International Advisor Group, will be responsible to develop the Roadmap.
EvalYear was already discussed at the International Chiang Mai Forum. It will also be discussed by UNEG, OECD/DAC, ECG and ALNAP at the UNEG General Assembly in April 2013 in New York, and at the OECD/DAC EvalNet TF on NECD at the May meeting in Helsinki. Negotiations are undergoing to have EvalYear officially launched at the forthcoming International Conference on National Evaluation Capacities to be organized in Brazil in October 2013.

While the roadmap would be developed collaboratively, VOPEs, Governments and international organizations will contribute in ways that best reflect their values, interests, and capacity. All of us together will make EvalYear a major milestone toward using inclusive evaluation to make the world a better place for all.